CEO of Thai Airways: Heading to departures?

We ask why the CEO of Thai Airways has been fired for leading a financial turnaround.

If you were the CEO of a company like Thai Airways and had been credited with turning the fortunes of the company around, it might not be unreasonable to expect some sort of reward, right? You certainly would not expect to lose your job. And yet that is exactly what has happened to Piyasvasti Amranand, the president and CEO of Thai Airways.

In 2011, the airline, partly due to last year's floods, made a loss of $321m. This year, however, it is expected to make a $191m profit.

But here is the catch, Thai Airways is 51 per cent owned by the country's finance ministry, and, as is often the case, new governments mean new management. And the outgoing CEO was appointed by the previous government. So, is he simply a political casualty? Veronica Pedrosa puts that question to the man himself.

Plus, what has put the brakes on trade expansion? Veronica Pedrosa asks Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation.

He talks about the growth versus austerity debate from the perspective of trade and says: "You need to find the proper mix between adjusting this huge debt mountain, which obviously is unsustainable, on the one side and on the other side, keeping the economy growing." It is a balance that he says is extremely difficult to achieve, "not least because various countries are leaning on either side".

And, at the start of the year, Justin Lin, the chief economist of the World Bank, warned of a new downturn worse than the 2008 financial crisis. He said developing countries, in particular, should be a major focus, because that is where things could be turned around. Counting the Cost spoke to him about the need for a new way of economic thinking.

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